


A Single Rose Left To Remember

by Not From Stars (Shadowcat)



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-12
Updated: 2011-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-24 13:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowcat/pseuds/Not%20From%20Stars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena blames herself for everything that has gone wrong in Mystic Falls and when she is sure that Damon is going to be healed, she leaves the only home she has ever known. She leaves letters for those closest to her, but for Damon, she leaves her journal. The journal is filled with all of Elena's thoughts over the last year -- including her growing love for Damon. The last written page in the journal is a letter for Damon -- and a carefully preserved rose. The rose he gave her once. Now, Damon is in a race against time to find Elena, because Klaus is looking for her, too. Klaus has discovered that because Elena survived the spell he used, her blood -- human or vampire -- now has the power to destroy him if used with an ancient spell. Damon is determined to find Elena before Klaus does and he doesn't care how many people he has to kill to save her. However, when Klaus brings in someone to use as leverage, Damon has to make a choice as to which life he's going to save -- Elena's... or Stefan's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for TVD_BigBang 2011.

Once she started thinking about what she needed to do, it wasn’t very hard to make the actual decisions. After all, she could count on one hand the number of things that had occurred in the last two years that weren’t her fault. The things that she was to blame for far outweighed those that she wasn’t.

It was the funeral of Jenna that made the plans start forming in her head.

Jeremy had lost his parents, two girlfriends, his uncle and now his aunt.

Bonnie had last her grandmother.

Caroline had lost her life as a human and therefore almost everyone that went with it.

Damon and Stefan had probably lost a lot more than she knew about. Anyone who didn’t know them well could say that they hadn’t lost anyone and that they were to blame for everything that had happened in Mystic Falls the last two years.

Elena knew better. The one thing that all of them had in common was her. Elena Gilbert. If it hadn’t been for her, then none of the tragedies that had happened would have ever occurred. There would have been no reason for them to have.

She had planned to slip away soon after the funeral. She had started packing a small suitcase to take with her, something that she could easily sneak out of the house. She couldn’t pack up a lot because that would make people suspicious and it would make it almost impossible for her to disappear like she wanted to.

Disappear so that no one else would get hurt because of her.

She checked on Jeremy, finding him sleeping, and then she went into Jenna’s room. Everything looked the same as it had before Jenna died – and somehow that made everything hurt even worse. Nothing in here had changed, while everything on the outside of this room had. She sat on Jenna’s bed, reaching for one of her pillows, holding it against her as she tried to fight back the latest surge of tears. She didn’t think that she would ever run out of tears.

“I’m sorry, Jenna,” she whispered through the tears. “I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve for any of this to happen. Not to you.”

All Jenna had ever tried to do was take care of her and Jeremy and give them a home after their parents died. She had never done anything wrong as far as Elena could see – unless it had been all of her efforts to keep her safe when she didn’t deserve it.

Part of her just wanted to curl up in here and go to sleep – shutting out the world and everything that had happened. Go to sleep and hope that when she woke up, the world would make sense again. Jenna would be alive and bouncing around the house or talking about what she and Alaric would be doing that night. Uncle John – she couldn’t seem to call him her father yet – would be poking his nose into her business and trying to flex his status as the oldest male in the family in order to get her to listen to something he wanted her to know. Hell, even Isobel would be alive and be out there somewhere wreaking havoc in someone else’s life.

But none of that was likely to happen.

And an even darker part of her wanted to just go to sleep and never wake up again. If she just went to sleep and never woke up again, would that be able to balance out everything that had happened and all of the lives that had been lost or destroyed merely because she existed?

It would hurt her brother to know she was thinking thoughts like this, but she couldn’t help them. He had said that he could handle losing everyone else because he still had her, but how could he really mean that now? She had caused him to lose every family member that he had. All he had left was her. She didn’t see that as being a fair exchange for him and she knew that once the shock and the grieving wore off, he would feel the same way.

Maybe he would even say that she wasn’t even his real sister since his parents had adopted her. She had been given up by her own parents and then took his from him, as well.

Elena sighed, laying back on the bed and shaking her head. No, even at his worst, Jeremy would never think that about her, much less say such things. He loved her and no matter who had given birth to her, she was still his sister. He had shown that so many times over the last few months.

Even with everything and everyone he had lost because of her, she was still his sister and he still wanted to look out for her. She had seen that in his eyes several times since they started learning the truth about Mystic Falls and their family.

She had seen it in his eyes when she woke up after Klaus had tried to kill her in the same ceremony that he had killed Jenna in.

It should have been her that died then instead of Jenna. She should have died so many months before when she realized that she was the target and the reason things were happening. Damon should never have rescued her from Elijah and maybe all of this death and pain could have been averted.

She closed her eyes and buried her face in the pillow again.

It doesn’t matter what she thought about any of it. Damon would never have allowed her to die. He had made that point very clear – he would always choose her life over someone else’s no matter what she might think about the importance of someone else’s life.

Elena sighed. She needed to get up and go back to her room to finish what she had to do. Klaus was still out there and she couldn’t keep hiding behind any of her friends.

Damon.

She needed to finish her plans and get out of town before Damon was recovered enough to stop her.

Damon had almost died and she was never going to be able to forget how he looked or anything that the two of them had said.

Another life that was almost lost because of her. He wouldn’t have been bitten by the werewolf if he hadn’t been looking out for her.

Elena moved a hand over her mouth to stop the sob that she knew was building. Damon was going to survive, but only because Stefan had traded himself to Klaus for the blood to save him. Stefan had willingly become a monster like Klaus in order to get the cure for Damon.

She had cost Jeremy all of his family and cost Damon his only family.

She closed her eyes tightly and took several deep breaths.

She was running out of time. She needed to get out of town before Damon was recovered and Jeremy figured out what she was planning to do. She had no doubt that the two of them would never allow her to leave – no matter that it was for their own safety for her to do so. It was only a matter of time before Klaus came looking for her again now that Katherine had gone to ground somewhere.

Swallowing, she got up from the bed and replaced the pillow, smoothing the wrinkles from the bed where she had been laying.

“I’m so sorry, Jenna. I wish I could fix this and give you your life back. You were a wonderful person and a great parent and I’ll miss you so much.”

There was one more thing that she needed to do before she left the room. Swallowing hard, she went over to Jenna’s dresser and lifted the top of her jewelry box.

 

After Elena finished packing her suitcase and had taken care of everything she thought she needed to take care of, she climbed into her vehicle and headed to one last place. No matter what had happened or what she was doing, she couldn’t leave without going to the cemetery one last time.

By now, she knew how to find the graves by heart and it tore at her when she saw the four headstones so close together. People shouldn’t have so many dead family members to visit in their lives.

Of course, people shouldn’t have to bury what amounted to two sets of parents, either.

Three sets, she reminded herself. First her parents, next Jenna, and then John and Isobel.

Three sets of parents that she knew now had loved her, and three parents that had left her. Only the deaths of Grayson and Miranda had been accidents – as far as she knew. She didn’t think she wanted to ever find out that they had been anything other than an accident.

She sat at the graves of Grayson and Miranda for awhile and filled them in on everything that had happened and what she was doing. She explained about all of the things that she had discovered and reassured them that Jeremy was left with capable people to look after him. She didn’t think they could forgive her for anything if she didn’t make sure that their son would be taken care of.

After communing with them, she moved to Jenna’s grave. It was still difficult to see Jenna’s name carved in the cold stone. She was still so full of guilt and sorrow over what had happened to her aunt. She didn’t have the words for what she wanted to say, but then again, she had spent a great deal of time in Jenna’s room in the days leading up to the decision she had now made. She ran her hand along the top of the stone and let out a breath. She kissed the tips of her fingers and then pressed them against the headstone for a long moment.

She swallowed hard as she moved to stand in front of John’s stone. She and Jeremy had insisted that John was to have a headstone as well. Damon had made sure that John was laid to rest alongside the rest of the family – and he had told her that Isobel was there, as well. She never asked him for the details about how he had managed to get her buried there. It was probably all the better if she didn’t know.

“I wish I had had the opportunity to get to know both of you better,” she started. “I don’t know if we would have ever gotten to be close – or even been able to act like a real family – but I would have liked for us to have at least gotten to make that decision ourselves.” She swallowed hard. “John… I’m sorry. I can’t call you Dad yet and it feels too weird to call you Uncle John. You told me that Isobel loved me and that she wanted to keep me safe and that’s why she gave me up. I believed you and I believe that you did truly love her. I wish … there are so many things that I wish. I wish I had gotten to know the Isobel that you knew. That last day, when she killed herself in front of me, I genuinely believe that she cared how she had hurt me and hurt the people around me. I wish I knew how long she had been under the compulsion from Klaus, though, and that and the first time I met her is going to color every memory of her that I have. What I don’t understand is how you can hate vampires so much, but you truly loved her even after she was changed.”

Elena could feel the tears sliding down her cheeks as she stepped closer to John’s stone and rested her hands on top of it.

“I left Grayson’s protection ring for Jeremy and I had yours resized for me. I’m also wearing Isobel’s necklace. I’m not sure how you got a hold of it after Isobel died, but you knew to put it in Jenna’s jewelry box for me to find. You must have had some idea of what I would do – or that I would want to keep something of Jenna’s with me. I bet you would be surprised to know that I needed to have a part of you and a part of Isobel with me, too. If I have both, maybe that will give me double the protection when I really need it? You said in your letter that you failed me, but you didn’t. In your own way, you tried to protect me and keep me safe from a life that you thought destroyed the woman you loved. I may not agree with your methods, but I can’t argue with the madness behind them. I only wish that you could have told me some of those things long before you were going to die. It might have helped to know some of those things a long time ago when we didn’t get along and you tried to make sure that I disliked you. I still don’t know why you spent so much time getting me to dislike you when you were also working in your own way to look after me.”

Elena wiped her cheeks, but the tears seemed to keep coming.

“I would never have asked anyone to give up their life for mine, you had to have known that. I think that’s why you didn’t tell Jeremy or me beforehand what the spell you knew would do. You knew that I would try to talk you out of it. You knew that I would try to make something happen before the spell could be done. You said that I was extraordinary, but John, I don’t believe that. If I was, wouldn’t I have figured out a way to protect the people I loved long before all of this happened? If I was as extraordinary as you thought, I would have realized that leaving town and everyone I loved would have stopped the killing and the death a long time ago.” She shook her head. “I have no doubts that you loved me and that everything you did was your way of trying to protect your daughter. You said that you should have listened to my side of things, but I should have listened to you, too. I should have realized that there was a reason you felt as strongly as you do about vampires. I should have realized that there was a real reason that you disliked Damon. I wouldn’t have agreed that you should hate him or Stefan or even Anna, but I would have understood why you didn’t like him or other vampires. The love of your life became a vampire and then for so many reasons, you had to work with or for them. I can only imagine that one of the originals or Katherine’s friends must have used me or Isobel to threaten you into doing what they wanted you to do. You believed that Isobel would keep me safe, but something happened that made you doubt that she had that kind of power.”

She took a deep breath, and then shook her head slowly. “I’m going to stop him, John,” she said softly. “I don’t know how, yet, but Klaus is going to pay for everything that he’s done. I’m going to find a way to end him and everyone that’s aligned with him. Jeremy will be safe, I can promise you that much. Alaric and Damon and Bonnie and Caroline will all look after him and protect him. I know that I can count on them to make sure that Klaus or Katherine never get their hands on him.” She sniffled. “I can almost see that disapproving look that you’re giving me, but I think that you of all people understand why I’m doing this. I know if you were here that you would never let me go up against something like Klaus or leave the protection of my friends. But, you know, you gave up your life to ensure mine. How can I not be willing to do the same for the last family I have left?” The laugh that escaped her was humorless. “I guess I’ve inherited your stubbornness or foolhardiness, one of the two or maybe both. Maybe that’s why we never quite saw eye to eye. Maybe it’s because I am a great deal like you. I don’t know, I just know that I have to do this. Just as you decided how you were going to protect me, I had to decide how to protect Jeremy and my friends. I hope… I hope that somewhere you can see me and one day you’ll be able to be proud of what I’m doing now. I know that I should have done this a long time ago. If I had, well, maybe you and Jenna would still be alive. Hell, maybe Isobel would be, too. Better late than never, right?”

Elena wiped her face again, even though she knew that the tears weren’t going to stop anytime soon. She touched the stone where his name was carved into it and took another deep breath, trying to steady herself. “I love you, John. Maybe not as the father I now know that you desperately wanted to be, but I do love you as my blood and my family. I didn’t like your methods, but I understand that they were motivated by love. When the time comes for me, I hope that I can be as brave about facing my own death as you were.”

She dropped her hand to her side and stood quietly for a few long moments. After giving the group of four headstones one last look, she turned and headed to the exit of the graveyard. She had one more stop to make at the post office and then she needed to get out of town before someone tried to stop her.

 

Alaric couldn’t believe what he was seeing and he looked back down at the wrinkled paper in his hand. He could read the words and understand them, but he was having a hard time accepting their meaning. How could she have done something so damn stupid? Didn’t she realize that she wasn’t safe on her own? Didn’t she realize that she was still very much a target for any of Klaus’ people who heard about her – not to mention the target she was presenting for Klaus himself by leaving her tattered little army of protectors?

He had to run a hand over his face as he realized that Elena knew exactly what she was doing and how much danger she was placing herself in. Something inside the girl had broken when Jenna died. He couldn’t imagine what she felt at also losing Isobel and finding out that John had for once thought about someone else and had taken part in a spell that traded his life for hers.

“Damn it, Elena,” he sighed as he read the short letter that she had mailed to him.

Mailed.

She had mailed it to him, guaranteeing that he wouldn’t receive it until she was already gone. He could picture that being the last thing she did on the way out of Mystic Falls. She would have packed what she thought she needed and then on the way out of town she would have stopped to mail the letter. She would want him to know what had happened to her, but she wouldn’t want him to know until there was no time to stop her. He had to admit that it was a good plan and if it had been anyone else he would have been impressed.

But the fact that Elena had run in an attempt to protect the rest of them kept him from being impressed. The last thing he had promised Jenna was that he would take care of Elena and Jeremy.

He couldn’t very well keep that promise when one of his charges had disappeared.

 _… I know how much you loved Jenna and I am so sorry that I wasn’t able to stop Klaus from killing her. I would have done anything he wanted me to if it would have just kept her alive. I don’t know if you realized it, but Jenna loved you very much. It was a little scary for her at first because she got her heart broken once a long time ago, but she knew you were worth the heartbreak. I’ve never seen her as happy as she was while she was with you. You made her happy and for that I am very grateful. Please, take care of yourself, and please take care of Jeremy. He won’t agree with my decision and I don’t think he’ll let himself understand that it was the only thing I could to make sure he stayed safe from the people that keep wanting to use my loved ones to get to me. He’s the only family I have left, Alaric, and I can’t handle the thought of anything happening to him. You’ve been looking out for me since all of this started and I appreciate that, but you don’t need to worry about me any longer. You also don’t have to worry that anything else will happen in town because someone is after me. I realize now that the only way to keep the people and the town I love safe is to leave. I’m sorry for everything that has happened to you because of your association with me or with vampires in general, Alaric. I hope that one day you will find your happiness again. If there is anyone here that deserves something like a happy ending, it would be you._

“Damn it,” he cursed again. “You’re just a kid, Elena. None of this was your fault.” He clenched his fist around the letter he was holding. How had she gotten it into her head that all of the bad things that had happened here was her fault? He didn’t blame her for any of it and he was sure that none of her friends blamed her, either.

Well, after everything she had lost in her life, he hoped that none of her friends blamed her.

He wasn’t looking forward to having to explain all of this to Jeremy.

Close on the heels of that thought was that he didn’t want to be the one who had to explain all of this and what Elena had done to Damon.

He was pretty sure the volatile vampire was not going to be too pleased when he found out about Elena’s flight out of town and away from his protection.

 

In her own room, Bonnie was having a hard time keeping her cursing quiet as she read her own letter from Elena.

“Idiot,” she muttered as she re-read the letter. “Sometimes, girl, you can be a real idiot.”

 _I can’t do this any longer, Bonnie. I can’t just sit back and watch everyone get hurt or lose someone close to them to help me or to keep me safe. You’re my best friend and even you have gotten hurt because of me…_

On some level, she understood her best friend’s desire to protect all of them and keep them safe. On another level, she wanted to yell and scream at her for trying to do all of it by herself. Elena was human. Yes, she had vampire blood in her system from Damon, but she was still only a human. She couldn’t possibly hope to survive an attack by Klaus and his people all alone.

It was one of the lines in the letter that caused her to forget about keeping her reaction quiet.

 _… if I’m not there, then no one can be hurt trying to protect me. If they’re busy trying to hunt me down, then they won’t be there attacking people we care about in order to hurt me. This way, they can just come after me without having to go through the people I love…_

Elena had lost her mind. She was purposefully making herself into bait in the hopes that she could protect them and the town. She was well aware that she wouldn’t be able to survive an attack by any vampire or werewolf that came after her if she was alone.

 _… I know haven’t always been the best friend you’ve needed me to be in the last year or so, and I’m sorry. No matter what has been going on with me, I should have tried harder to be there for you with all of the changes you’ve gone through in your own life – some of those changes being triggered because of me or the Salvatores or the fact that I’m related to the Petrovas…_

“None of which it your fault you idiot,” Bonnie muttered.

Yes, maybe things wouldn’t have become so bad if Elena didn’t care for the vampire brothers, but there was also the chance that things could have gotten even worse if it hadn’t been for Elena’s heart getting involved. If she hadn’t loved them and they hadn’t loved her, the town could easily have become a bloodbath. Elena’s heart had probably saved more than one life.

 _… I love you like a sister and no matter what happens in the days to come, you will always be my sister, Bonnie. Take care of yourself and look after Caroline and Jeremy. See if there is anything in your book to protect Caroline from werewolf bites. I know she cares about Tyler and he seems to care about her, but even Stefan didn’t know if anything could ever be happy when a vampire and a werewolf got together. I won’t be there to help make Tyler’s life miserable if he hurts her, so you’re going to have to do the job for both of us…_

Bonnie could feel the tears starting in her eyes as she dropped the letter down onto her bed. She couldn’t be angry with Elena because she had an understanding of how scared and how hurt she was. She had lost almost everyone in such a short time and this was her way of trying to keep anything from happening to her or Jeremy or Caroline.

Jenna being killed and then almost losing Damon had been enough to start the cracks spreading in the armor that Elena had crafted around herself. When Stefan went to the side of evil on top of everything else, it must have been enough to shatter all of the hope that her friend had been desperately clinging to.

“This isn’t good, Elena,” Bonnie whispered as a tear slid down her cheek. “Oh sweetie, this isn’t good at all.”

 

It wasn’t that Caroline couldn’t believe that Elena was trying to sacrifice herself for all of them. She had seen a lot in the past few months and seen something that no one else had seemed to notice. She had seen her best friend breaking down bit by bit with every additional thing that happened to her or anyone else. She was able to see that there would come a time where it would get to be too much and her friend would do something foolish and dangerous.

She had said something to Tyler after the funeral of Jenna and John, after all. The two of them had secretly been keeping an eye on Elena since then – even though she didn’t realize it. Caroline wasn’t going to take any chances on losing her because some old and bastardy vampire decided he had some other spell that he needed Elena or her blood for.

The thing was, even though she and Tyler were trying to protect Elena, two things happened that neither one of them were prepared for.

First, Damon had become ill from when Tyler bit him – and she knew how sorry Tyler really was for that. He had tried to _eat_ her, after all. Then, Stefan had gone over to the side of the creepy and evil.

She knew that both of those events had broken pieces of Elena that no one else had been able to see.

No, what she couldn’t believe was that Elena had said goodbye in a letter! She didn’t come in person to tell her what she was doing, but had _mailed her a letter!_ They had been best friends since they were practically babies and they had seen the best and the worst of each other. So why hadn’t Elena come to her in person to tell her that she was leaving and why?

“Damn it, Elena,” she fumed. “Why?”

“You know why,” Tyler said quietly as he handed Caroline back her letter and retrieved the one Elena sent to him. “She’s not stupid. She knew if she came in person that you would have prevented her from leaving. You’re stronger than she is. You would have restrained her and called me. Then, the two of us would have taken her to Alaric or Damon so that all of us could attempt to talk some sense into her and keep her from being suicidal.”

Caroline frowned at him and then sighed. “Why were we the only two who could see that she was falling apart, Tyler? I mean, yeah, we’re her friends, but how could none of the others see what was happening to her right in front of their eyes?”

“Because, for once, you and I weren’t all wrapped up in our own lives and what was happening to us. Because of all of the things that have happened to us, we were on the lookout for even more or looking for bad things to start happening to our friends.”

“So, Elena is your friend again?” Caroline asked carefully. “You certainly haven’t been too nice to her in the past several months.”

“Well, really, the only problem I had with her was her annoying insistence in fighting all of Jeremy’s battles for him.” Tyler sighed as he admitted that. “But now, I can see why she did it. He was all she had left. Besides, she has saved my life -- and yours -- quite a few times. Plus, she didn’t let her boyfriends kill me after the other werewolves were torturing you.”

Caroline smiled faintly. “You were in more danger from Bonnie and Elena after that happened. But at least you didn’t abandon me because of what I was turned into like Matt did.” There was some residual bitterness in her voice.

“Matt’s an idiot,” Tyler said immediately. “You’re still Caroline, just with new and extra features.”

Caroline’s smile would have been more light if the situation wasn’t so serious. “You might be just a little bit biased.”

“Probably,” he agreed, putting his arms around her and pulling her close. “The point is, Elena is our friend. Right now, she is doing something stupid because she wants to protect us.”

“She’s not thinking clearly.”

“Of course she’s not. How could she be with all of the shit that has happened to her? That’s why she has us. She needs us to stick together and find her so we can look after her and think things through. She can’t think rationally, so we need to do that for her.”

“I can’t let anything happen to her, Ty. She’s always been family to me -- always a sister. When my parents didn’t have time for me, Elena and her family always did.”

Tyler kissed the top of her head. “You won’t lose her, Caroline, I promise. We’ll find her and we’ll protect her. A vampire and a werewolf. She can’t have better bodyguards than us.”

“What about Damon and Bonnie?”

“They can help us if they want to -- and if they’re doing it to help our friend who is in trouble and not trying to show each other up.”

 

It wasn’t that Jeremy was surprised by the letter he was currently reading; he was just irritated that he hadn’t realized sooner what his sister was thinking or feeling. He remembered how she had apologized before Jenna’s funeral, but he had thought he made it clear to her that he didn’t hold her responsible for anything that had happened and that as long as he had her, it would be all right. Either she hadn’t believed him or she hadn’t received the same assurances from others in their group.

Which meant he needed to find out who had made his sister feel like she had to make herself into a bigger target by leaving town.

Realizing how big of a target Elena had turned herself into, Jeremy burst into her bedroom. Her room as a private sanctuary ended as soon as she was missing. He was sure the rest of their group would agree with him. Once in her room, he went directly to her dresser and opened her jewelery box. He sifted through it and then let out a sigh of relief, closing the lid and putting it back down.

Her vervain necklace and Uncle John’s protection ring were gone.

That meant that she had least thought about having some safeguards with her. That didn’t make him any less annoyed with her actions, but at least she wasn’t being a complete idiot.

Not completely.

Just mostly.

He dropped down onto Elena’s bed, looking around her room. She had been gone for at least two days. Two days in which he had assumed she was with Damon. He assumed that she was safe and well and that she was just making sure that Damon was healing.

He should have taken the time to check. He should have called or gone over to check on her. He had promised himself that he would be a better brother and take care of her, and yet she had been able to pull this because he hadn’t done what he promised.

 

Damon stared down at the package that he kept turning over in his hands. He had no problem recognizing the the handwriting. It wasn't as if he hadn't spent a lot of time with her as she was doing homework or writing in her journal. He ran one hand along the paper, feeling the almost invisible indentions that were left behind after moisture had dried. He didn't need to feel the remnants of Elena's tears to know he wasn't going to like whatever it was that Elena had decided to send him through the mail.

That was another concern. Why had Elena mailed him something instead of just delivering it to him herself? She had spent enough time here with him while he was recovering, and it was her house, anyway. He had made sure that she had some place safe that she couldn't be taken from in the middle of the night -- or the middle of the day even.

He started to open the package when he heard someone pounding on the door.

"Come on, Damon, let me in."

Oh great. Like he wanted to try dealing with whatever had upset Vampire Barbie this time. Not that she had been a bother and she had in fact done her part to try to keep on eye on Elena and keep her safe.

"Come on, Salvatore! Elena's gone!"

And with New and Improved Werewolf Ken. Wasn't he just...

He was at the door and pulling it open in a flash. "What do you mean she's gone?"

"Just what he said," Caroline responded, her voice quiet for once. "She mailed a bunch of letters to people and just disappeared."

"She apologized for all kinds of things that weren't her fault and now, none of us can find her." Tyler added. By us, he meant him and Caroline. "Caroline and I have been searching everywhere we can think of and she's nowhere to be found."

Damon refrained from banging his head into the side of the door. What foolhardy and self-sacrificing thing had Elena done this time? As much as he loved her he would really like to be able to remove her tendency to martyr herself for others out of her personality. He hated seeing her get hurt -- especially for people that he didn’t think deserved her sacrifices.

"What did she apologize for this time?" Damon asked, after motioning the two of them inside and shutting the door behind them. "Besides oh, I don't know, existing?"

Because one too many times he had heard Elena say that things never would have happened if she hadn't survived the car wreck that killed her parents. Even worse, he had heard her say that she should have died instead of someone else that she had lost. Those were the times he had to work very hard not to yell at her about wasting her life. Since falling in love with her, he had let a few of his more human emotions and empathy come out and he could understand how much she was hurting at all of the lives that had been lost around her.

It was Caroline who responded. "She apologized for ruining my life and for the fact that my mother is an intolerant bitch."

"She didn't call your mother an intolerant bitch," Damon said knowingly.

"No, but she might as well have. It would be the truth."

"She did apologize for ruining our lives though," Tyler said, shaking his head. "I'm not sure how she thinks she was responsible for anything that I've gone through since it's apparently been a curse in my family for a long time. It's not her fault that I'm a werewolf."

"And it's not her fault that I'm a vampire. She didn't kill me, Katherine did."

Damon started to say something when he heard more people arrive on the porch. He opened the door and wordlessly motioned them in.

"Let me guess, Elena's Delivery Service." He would have smiled if he wasn't already trying to figure out where Elena had gone.

"I should have come over here sooner," was Jeremy's response. "I knew what kind of condition she was in emotionally, but when she said she was spending time here with you, I believed her. I mean, this is _Elena_ and we all know how she can be. She even apologized to me at Jenna's funeral for taking away all of my family. I should have expected her to pull something dumb."

"How long?" Damon looked from Jeremy to Alaric.

"At least a lead of two days," Alaric said quietly. "We all thought she was here with you, but from the looks of her room and the dates on everything, she left at least two days ago. Maybe three."

Damon wanted to bang his head into a door. Elena was gone. She had run away from the one place she was safest. "Does anyone have any idea where she might have gone?"

"Damon," this time it was Bonnie that spoke. "I think she went to find Katherine or Klaus."

If he was human, his heart would have stopped beating at that comment. Even so, it took him a moment to process through the panic he felt at the idea of Elena getting anywhere near Klaus. "Why? Why do you think that, Bonnie?"

"Because she made herself bait," Alaric said reluctantly.

"She told Caroline that she was going to put a stop to all of this," Tyler responded.

"And she told me that if they were out hunting for her, then they weren't here hurting her friends," Bonnie answered.

"She made herself into a target for us," Jeremy's voice was quiet. "She's going to get herself killed because she thinks that she owes it to us."

 _One of these days, I am going to lo-jack that girl._ Out loud he let out a sigh. "So, she sent all of you a letter apologizing for ruining your lives and promising she was going to make it all up to you by leaving town and going after her hunters."

"That sums it up pretty well," Caroline agreed. "Damon, she was in love with you. Didn't she send you anything?"

"Yes, Vampire Barbie," Damon said calmly. "I was about to open it when the lot of you started arriving on my doorstep."

Tyler gave him a sour look, but Damon stopped him from saying anything. "Oh don't even start with me, Werewolf Ken. You almost killed me, remember?"

"Not on purpose!"

"Be that as it may, that's not really the important thing here. The important thing is that our Elena has gotten into her head to do something incredibly noble and stupid. We have to find her and stop her." He looked around the room. "Ideas, people?"

"I could try and pick up her scent to see if I can track her," Tyler offered.

"I could try that, too," Caroline agreed. "Heightened senses are one of the cool things about being a vampire."

 _Go go Power Rangers_ , Damon thought as he looked at the others. "That's definitely an idea. Jeremy, is there any place you can think of that she would go?"

Jeremy shook his head. "All of our family were here. We didn't have any other family anywhere else. All of John's friends would have been people that were working either with the vampires or for the council." He sighed. "Besides Elena, the person John loved the most was Isobel."

"I could probably use something from her room to do a tracking spell," Bonnie said as she looked at Damon. "She wouldn't have been able to take a whole lot of things if she was trying to make a quick exit before any of us realized what she was doing." She sighed, running a hand through her hair. "I know she thought she was doing the best thing she could for us, but does she really think we care so little about her? Does she really think we would just let her leave and not do anything about it to find her?"

"She's not thinking clearly," Caroline defended her best friend. "I mean, would any of us be? She just buried her Aunt and her real parents -- one of which made sure he died so she could live. She lost her other parents months ago, almost lost her brother how many times? She thought she lost Bonnie because of everything that has happened. I was turned into a vampire, she thinks Tyler and Alaric hate her for what they've lost, and she believes that Damon hates her because he lost Stefan."

"What?" Damon's voice was cold as he looked at Caroline. "What makes you think she believes I hate her over Stefan? I told her that no matter the choice, I would always choose her."

Caroline just stared at him, so it was Tyler that answered him. "Klaus was able to make Stefan go to the dark and killer side because your brother needed his blood to save you. If it hadn't been for Elena and people being after her, you and I never would have fought and you wouldn't have needed Klaus' blood to survive."

Alaric let out a curse. "I don't hate her. God, I couldn't hate her. She's just a kid."

"She broke," Jeremy said. "It's been too much and none of us realized that Elena was shattering right in front of us. She was so focused on taking care of us that we never thought about how everything was weighing on her."

"Tyler did," Caroline pointed out. "He's the one that said he and I needed to keep an eye on her because she looked like she was about to fall apart."

"Good puppy," Damon said caustically. "But I told Elena that I would always choose her no matter what happened."

"Maybe she didn't think that was true when it came to her or your brother," Bonnie said evenly. "I know how protective she is of Jeremy and she was so glad that you and Stefan had started mending whatever there was festering between you. And, well, it wasn't your choice this time. Someone else made the choice to save you. Yes, it was Stefan's choice, but we all know how Elena can be. With everything else she's blaming herself for, what Stefan did was just one more thing."

"You know, a therapist could make millions off of the kids in this town," Damon sighed.

"Most therapists couldn't handle the things that go on in our lives and this town," Bonnie said practically.

"There you go, Jeremy, a new career goal. Go to college and become a therapist. Come back here and bilk all of the first families of lots of money by providing therapy to their kids." Damon was trying to show them that he was fine and he thought he was funny.

"That's not important right now," Jeremy pointed out. "The important thing is that we find my sister before she gets herself killed."

"I know. Believe me, I know." Damon shook his head. "That girl needs a tracking device or something that keeps her from chasing trouble." He pushed himself away from the wall. "Ok. Barbie and Fido will go back to Elena's with Bonnie to see what they can pick up in her room and outside. See if you can figure out a trail once you get past the post office. Bonnie will come back here with something to do one of her witchy spells to see if she can locate anything pertaining to Elena." He looked at Jeremy. "Necklace?"

Jeremy nodded. "Her vervain necklace is gone, as is Uncle John's ring."

"That's something then. It means she thought enough about her safety to at least make sure she had them with her. Who knows what kind of magic John had added to that ring. I think that we can all agree he loved his daughter and if he had time to do anything before he convinced Bonnie to do that spell, then we can assume that he would have found another witch to add extra mojo to it."

"Why wouldn't he have asked me to do it?"

Damon gave her a look. "One, he knew that you didn't trust him. Two, you would have wanted to know what he was planning if he asked you to mess with the magic of his ring. He wasn't about to tell you he was going to trade his life for Elena's. You not only wouldn't have believed him, you might have tried to stop him."

"No she wouldn't have," Jeremy said quietly. "Bonnie wouldn't have tried to stop him. She would have chosen Elena's life over his." He sighed. "The same way I would have."

Damon waved his hand. "Yes, we all agree that Elena's life was worth more than her birth father's -- but then again, I may be more than a little partial. After all, how many times did he try to kill me, mess with my plans or endanger Elena because he was a moron?"

"Damon..." Alaric warned.

"Whatever. While those three are at the Gilbert house, Alaric and Jeremy will be going through maps to see if they can put together an idea of a trail Elena may have taken. Alaric will call some of his secret friends and find out if there have been any weird happenings that would give us a location of Klaus, Stefan or Katherine. We don't want Elena to find any of them alone or before we find her."

"Would Stefan really hurt Elena? He loves her."

"He's a ripper, Jeremy," Damon said in what counted as a gentle voice for him. "He has no emotions and thinks only of killing and feeding. He won't recognize Elena as anything more than food." And he, personally, had no plans to let one fang of his brother's get anywhere near Elena.

"What are you going to be doing while we're all out following your orders?" Tyler demanded.

"While the Scooby gang is out scoobying, I'm going to find out what it was that Elena sent to me."

"Damon --"

"We'll find her, Jeremy," Damon said quietly. "We'll find her and we'll get her back safely."

Damon stood on the staircase as he listened to the others go into different directions to carry out the tasks he had assigned them. He didn't like this team leader thing and what he really wanted to do was go out there and chase Elena down himself. However, she had a two day lead on him and she had to have known that he wouldn't let her go like this. The only way to get inside her head while she was running off to who knew where was to go upstairs and open the package he had been holding when Caroline and Tyler showed up.

"Damn you for being so incredibly selfless, Elena."


	2. Chapter 2

Elena was positive that this was the best thing to be doing for the sake of everyone she loved back home. However, she wasn’t under any delusions that this was the smartest or safest thing for her to do. She sat in a diner that had just shown up beside the road in the middle of nowhere while she was driving. She couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten anything substantial and the diner was a stark reminder that she needed to actually keep her strength up if she was going to accomplish anything – and she had to accomplish what she had set out to do. There were too many lives that were depending on her. There were too many people that she owed some kind of restitution to for everything they had all been through.

It didn’t matter how many times her friends told her that she wasn’t responsible. In some ways she was and that was what she needed to fix.

She ordered something from the menu and then looked at her map and her notebook in front of her. Once she was sure she wasn’t being watched, she pulled another book out of her bag and lay it in her lap.

 _Stefan’s journal._

She knew that at least up until siding with Klaus he had been writing things down in his journal just like she did and she had taken it with her – hoping that it would give her some answers to everything she was trying to understand.

So far, though, it hadn’t given her any hint of where he and Klaus might have gone after Stefan gave in to the monster that Klaus wanted him to become. There were a lot of things in the journal about Damon and herself – and several things about Katherine, too.

At one time, she might have been hurt or upset that he spent so much time thinking on Katherine after she had returned to Mystic Falls. That time had long since passed, though. After all, she had spent a lot of time thinking and writing about Damon in her journal. In fact, it was realizing how she felt about Damon that had given her the final push to try to make things right for him and everyone else.

Reading through Stefan’s words also showed her that he had been aware of Elena’s changing feelings for Damon and no matter what he may have told Damon, he was secretly encouraging of it in his journal. Like Elena, Stefan felt that he owed Damon some kind of chance at happiness after everything he had done to take it away. The knowledge that Stefan was aware that she was in love with both of them surprised Elena, but not as much as reading his musings about whether there could be something between the three of them.

 _… she’s not Katherine and she will never be anything like Katherine. That’s why I think there could be a good chance of the three of us having something true and lasting together. Elena is such a wonderful person and she has so much love to give and there isn’t anyone in this world that I would trust besides Damon to keep her safe and look after her if something happened to me. He loves her and would never accept anything harming her – even me. That’s something that I can believe in no matter what happens in the coming days. He would die for her and I already know he would kill for her. In fact, I’m counting on that. If anything ever happened where I became a threat to Elena, I know that Damon would do what was right and protect Elena from me no matter what he had to do. It’s that knowledge that lets me breathe sometimes when I think of everything she’s going to come up against. She’s not as devious as Katherine always was and that’s why she needs Damon to be devious for her…_

Elena sighed, blinking back tears as she closed the journal and held it in her lap for a moment. Stefan had known that things were going to get really bad and he had put faith in Damon to keep her safe and alive. Only, he had probably never counted on something happening to endanger Damon like the werewolf bite.

Something that would never have happened if it hadn’t been for her. It just added to her guilt that Damon had wanted to hide it from her because he didn’t want her to know she was going to lose someone else she cared about.

She slid the journal back into her bag and poked aimlessly at her food. Everything had seemed so clear and worked out when she had decided to leave Mystic Falls. The problem was, she wanted to stop Klaus and make sure he wasn’t a threat to anyone she loved and she had no idea where to go to find him and Stefan. She didn’t have powers like Bonnie where she could find someone by using magic. The only thing she could do was to keep following her gut instincts about where to go and she wasn’t really trusting of those feelings right now.

Which was how she had made it to this diner in the first place. When she had started driving, she had been making choices on auto pilot and not really thinking about where she was going or why she was going that way. However, the more she thought about how everything had been going since she had left her home, she was beginning to think that she was being led somewhere.

 _Or compelled._

At that thought, Elena’s hand rose quickly to touch the necklace at her neck. She had braided the chains with the vervain and Isobel’s lapis stone together and she had hoped that it would be enough to protect her on her journey to wherever she was going. However, with everything that had happened, she had never thought to wonder if the vervain was still working – or if she needed to get more. Was it like other plants and lost its potency at some point? She wasn’t sure, but she’d be looking that information up as soon as she decided where she was staying for the night.

Of course, now she couldn’t stop thinking about the idea that someone was compelling where she went while she was driving. She was pretty sure that a vampire had to be face to face with their intended victim to compel them, but she had never really asked the guys about that.

 _She needed to call Damon._

Oh, she’d have to call him while she was still driving because if she called him a hotel room, he would probably be able to trace the call and track her down and that was the last thing she wanted to happen. She couldn’t allow him to be put right back into danger and that was what would happen if he decided to join her in her hotel room or followed her from it.

She knew Damon. She believed him when he said he loved her and that was how she knew he wouldn’t stay behind if he knew where she had gone. He would find her and insist that she either go back home or he would stay with her until she saw whatever she was doing to the end.

That was something that she just couldn’t allow as she couldn’t let him be put in danger because of her and it would kill her if something happened to him because of her.

Love was like that and she loved him enough to want to protect him from her.

She carefully ignored the voice in her head that sounded just like Damon that was demanding to know who was going to protect her from herself. As long as she stayed safe and alive long enough to make things right for Damon, then she would be happy with that. She had avoided death so many times in the last couple of years that if it was her time, she would be brave and determined like John had been.

She just needed enough time to save Stefan and stop Klaus from ever again being a danger to the ones she loved.

After all, Damon couldn’t stay angry at her if she saved his brother, right?

She decided not to dwell too much on that question and instead put her things back into her bag and finished her meal. When she was done, she got back on the highway. She had a goal -- of sorts -- to accomplish before she had to stop driving for the night. The first city she came to, she went searching for a store that she knew would have what she was looking for.

Half an hour and two hundred dollars later, she her original item plus quite a few more supplies that she would need.

 

"Elena just used one of her credit cards in a place called Marietta," Alaric looked up from the laptop he had been scanning, "Why is she in Ohio?"

Jeremy shrugged. "We don't know anyone in Ohio, at least, I don't think that we do."

"Could she be going to see someone who knew Isobel or John?"

"John really wasn't too forthcoming with any of us about where he came from or went to when he wasn't here, Ric," Jeremy said quietly. "He'd show up for awhile and then he would leave after he accomplished whatever he wanted to. As for Isobel... I didn't know much about her at all."

Alaric sighed. "I apparently didn't know much about her, either, and I was the one married to her."

"Well, we know that this family has a predilection for writing and journals," Caroline offered as she came into the room. "Maybe when Elena visited that house that Isobel liked to stay in when she was in town, she found something. Maybe she found something of John's beyond the letter and ring he told Jeremy to give her."

"I would have known if she found anything of John's, though," Jeremy insisted.

"Like you knew that she was writing us all goodbye letters while she was planning to do something incredibly stupid?" Tyler asked. His voice was more tired than combative.

"Can't we just track down her cell phone or something?" Caroline demanded.

"That's illegal," Bonnie said, looking up from her spellbook. "That and we don't have the equipment to do something like that and I can't do it with magic."

"I don't care if it's illegal. I mean, killing is illegal and we've certainly planned plenty of that." Tyler snorted in amusement and Caroline glared at him before continuing. "Besides, I bet that there is something we could use to track her phone in my mother's office."

The others in the room stared at her and then Alaric shook his head. "There is no way in hell your mother is going to do anything to help us in this situation. She's not exactly fond of vampires."

"No, she's not, but she's known Elena since she was a child. My mother may not be very good at being a mom, but she's good at her job and she loves this town. If we tell her that Elena ran off in some stupid attempt to forever save this town, she'll do everything she can to find her." Caroline shrugged. "She thinks she owes it to Miranda to find her daughter. They were friends when Miranda and Grayson were alive." Caroline sighed. "She cares about people and she'll help. She may hate what I am, but she's not going to let anyone who is still human die if she can help it. Elena definitely still falls into the realm of human so far."

“Only if one of the Three Stooges hasn’t gotten to her,” Jeremy said.

“They haven’t,” Alaric said with an assurance that didn’t quite meet his eyes.

“How can you know for sure?” That voice was Tyler’s -- even though he knew doubting that Elena was still alive would get him in trouble with Bonnie and Caroline.

“Because,” Alaric said softly. “If she was dead, Klaus or Stefan wouldn’t have been able to resist tormenting us with that news. They wouldn’t be able to resist tormenting Damon with it.”

 

Damon was looking at the package Elena had sent him when his phone rang. The caller ID was unfamiliar so he almost didn't answer it. However, the thought crossed his mind that it might be Klaus or Stefan calling to taunt him that they had Elena. If he didn't answer the call, then he could lose the chance to bargain for her safety.

"Salvatore."

"Is it possible for a vampire to compel you from across a great distance even if he's not face to face with you?"

It was Elena.

Damon clenched his jaw and took a moment to bite back the rush of anger about the danger she had put herself into. "Where the hell are you?!"

"I can't tell you that and you know it," Elena said with a note of regret in her voice. "Just answer my question."

"What have you done?"

"Damon, _please_. Just answer my question, it's important."

"If a vampire is strong and he's fed on you before, then yes. It is possible to compel someone over a distance if you're not protected in some way. Please tell me that you're at least using your brains enough to have put on your vervain?"

"Of course I'm wearing my necklace."

"Oh good, then you are not acting completely stupid."

"That's not fair!"

"Do not talk to me about fair, Elena!" Damon growled. "You ran off without a word to any of us. You didn't for once think about your safety and the fact that you are in serious danger. "

"I told you what I was doing and why!"

"When? When did you talk to me about what the hell you were planning?"

"I left you a letter."

"A letter. You left me a letter. How considerate of you." The truth being that he hadn't read her letter, yet. He also hadn't opened the book that had been enclosed with the letter.

"I knew that you would never let me leave if I told you what I wanted to do."

"Because you were too busy being stupid and risking your neck for no reason."

"It wasn't for no reason, Damon! You know me better than that."

"The resemblances between you and Katherine are getting more obvious as time passes. Playing on everyone’s emotions and worries is something that she was really good at, but I guess you already realize that. You’ve learned more from her being around that I thought you had."

Elena gasped when he said that. The fact that he thought she was acting like Katherine hurt. "I'm sorry. I shouldn’t have called and got you upset when you’re supposed to be resting to heal." She swallowed hard, trying to swallow back the tears that she could feel stinging her eyes and throat. Before she could say anything else, she hung up.

"Elena? Elena?!" When he heard the dial tone, he cursed. "Damn it!" The cell phone shattered against the wall as he threw it with as much force as he could.

Damon sat back down on the edge of the bed. He hadn't meant to say that about Katherine to Elena. He knew that she was nothing like Katherine. He had just been so angry about the idea of her being in danger that he hadn't stopped to think about his words. He had hurt her and that was the last thing he had wanted to do. Hurting her like that meant she wouldn’t call on him for help with whatever she was doing. He hated that. He wanted her to call him for help. If she called him, then he would know that she knew he would be there for her. And she needed his help. He could tell in her voice that there was more than one question she wanted to ask him.

Instead, he had snapped at her and hurt her feelings and made her feel like hell. He knew Elena very well and knew that she would be hurting and stubbornly trying to do it all on her own. Whatever _it_ was.

“Damn it,” he muttered, reaching for the letter and the leather-covered book that Elena had sent him.

He pulled the letter out of the book again and carefully unfolded it.

 _Damon,_

 _I have no doubts that you are going to think this is the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. However, there is no other choice I can make. The people I love have lost too much because of me and I am going to make sure that it stops now. I can’t fix things for Jeremy or Alaric or Bonnie or Caroline or Tyler. I can’t give them back the things that were taken away from them. But, in a way, I can fix what was taken from you. I’m going after Stefan, Damon. It’s because of me that you were dying. You were trying to protect me and you almost died from Tyler’s bite. Stefan had to trade himself to Klaus to get the blood to heal you. It’s my fault that you lost your brother and I’m going to bring him back for you -- or die trying. I know that part of you is wondering if I’m just saying that and I’m going after Stefan for me. Well, you’re wrong. I love you, Damon, and it’s because of me that you lost the last member of your family. I can never apologize for that, but I can try to make it right for you._

 _I hope that one day you can forgive me and understand the reasons for everything that I have done. Please take of the others. They’ll need you._

 _Elena_

 

Damon just frowned at the note in her handwriting in silence for a long moment.

" _They'll_ need me? _They'll need me_?!" Damon shook his head. "I'm not concerned with what they need, damn it. I'm concerned with what _you_ need." And what she needed -- now, more than ever -- was him.

He placed the letter back in the envelope and then set it down on the bed so that he could reach for the leather bound book that had accompanied the letter. It only took opening the cover and the first page to realize what he was holding in his hands.

“Elena.”

If he had ever needed a show of proof that Elena loved him – not that he did, mind you – then this would have wiped all of his doubts away.

He closed the book and held it up to his nose for a few moments.

Where she had sent the others long letters of how much she loved them and wanted them to be happy, she had gifted him with something far more precious. She had sent him her journal. The place where she wrote all of her thoughts and all of her secrets – and she had entrusted it to him.

He opened the book again, and caught the scent of something that was familiar. It was a very faint scent and no one but a vampire would have picked up on it. He flipped through the pages carefully until he could find the source of the scent.

He let the book fall open as he stared at what was pressed there between the pages.

A single rose.

He knew that rose and he knew where it was from. It was the first thing he had ever given Elena that didn’t seem to have some ulterior motive attached to it. What was telling in his mind was that the rose had been important enough to Elena that she had kept it. Not only had she kept it, but she had placed it in her journal next to all of the words of her heart and her mind.

Damon lifted the pressed rose to his nose and breathed in. The faint scent of the rose was mingled with the ever fainter scent of Elena. He could recall everything about the night he had given it to her and how she had looked.

“Damn you, Elena,” he whispered. “I will not be left with only a rose to remember you by. I will not let this be the last thing that we share between us. I refuse to lose you so easily.”

It hadn’t been easy to convince her of his love and it bothered him that he could lose her so much easier. Words could be stronger than most weapons, but a human body was so frail and fragile.

Words could do a lot of damage. That was something he already knew and this show of Elena’s affection made him feel even worse about the things he had said to her on the phone.

He leaned back against the headboard of the bed and started to flip aimlessly through the journal. There would be time later when he had Elena back that he could slow down and read every page at his leisure. Right now, though, he was trying to find any kind of clue as to where Elena had been headed when she left Mystic Falls. She wouldn’t have said anything to any of them and she wouldn’t have mentioned it in the letters she sent. However, her journal was like an extension of her she would have written in it while she tried to plan out what she was going to do.

He was flipping through when he came to a jagged page near the back of the journal. It looked like someone had tried to rip the page out of the journal and hadn’t succeeded.

He held it up to the light and then frowned. There wasn’t just writing on this page but dried tears as well. He could make out his name and the words _dying_ , _love_ and _blame_. He flipped the page to see that the page before was all about her finding out that he was dying from the werewolf bite. The page after the torn one started Elena’s thought process about how she needed to make things up to him for losing Stefan.

That meant that the missing page was probably full of her crying and blaming herself for everything that had happened to him – and how he was finally healed by Klaus’ blood. He would almost kill to know what was on that page that had caused Elena to tear it out.

Almost, because he was pretty sure that Elena would frown on him killing someone just to find out what she had written.

Of course, reading the entries before that one and after that one allowed him to put together a reasonable summary of what was on the page. From the amount of dried tearstains it could reasonably have been the entry she was writing when she thought he was dying. It was probably written after he told her how he felt and she had kissed him.

He knew how upset she was and how she felt about him, so why had she torn out the page before she gave him the journal?

Unless.

Unless she had torn it out before she had even decided to give him the journal. It was possible that she had torn out the page of her thoughts after she knew he was going to survive. Knowing Elena, she had probably written down a lot of things that night that frightened her and she had gotten rid of the page because she didn’t want the memory of that night and almost losing him.

He realized that his deduction didn’t make much sense because she had kept a detailed record of everything else that had hurt her and every person she had lost. So why would she have chosen that page to tear out and dispose of?

He frowned. What if Elena hadn’t torn out the page? It certainly didn’t make much sense that after writing so many details about everything else that had happened in her life she would tear out the page about him and almost dying.

He was trying to figure that out when something else crowded into his mind. The first thing that Elena had said when he answered the phone had been about compelling. What exactly had she said?

 _"Is it possible for a vampire to compel you from across a great distance even if he's not face to face with you?"_

He had been so relieved to hear her voice and know that she was alive that he had reacted before thinking. Instead of asking her why she needed to know he had torn into her. He hadn’t even waited to find out if she was unharmed.

The question though, that question seemed to be an odd one coming from Elena. She knew all about how compelling and wearing vervain worked. He and Stefan had both spoken to her at length on the subject and he had always made sure that if anything happened, she had her necklace that Stefan gave her on.

Why would she ask such a question unless…

 _NO!_

He slammed the journal shut and raced down the stairs.

“Klaus knows Elena is alive.”

 

Well, that had gone even worse than she had expected it to go.

Elena was sitting in her hotel room turning the disposable cell phone over and over in her hands. The body shaking sobs had long subsided, but every so often a tear continued to slide down her face. She couldn’t seem to stop them.

 _Damon thought she was just like Katherine._

That knowledge had ripped right into her heart. Of everything for him to say about her leaving, she had never thought he would think something like that. She had left Mystic Falls because she loved him and she wanted to make up for the things she had caused to go wrong. She had wanted to make sure he was safe and get his brother back for him. She had left to keep him and her friends safe and alive.

She wasn’t even sure what she was supposed to do now. Part of her wanted to get in her car and drive back to Mystic Falls and tell him how wrong he was to say that. To even _think_ that.

However, there was the part of her that said she had to remember why she was doing this in the first place. She couldn’t go back home until she knew that everyone else was going to be safe. She definitely couldn’t go home until she at least spoke to Stefan. She had to try to get through to him, now more than ever.

If she could save Stefan for him that would prove to Damon that she wasn’t anything like Katherine. Even if something happened to her, Stefan would be able to tell Damon that she had tried to help him.

If she could save Stefan for him that would prove to Damon that she wasn’t anything like Katherine. Even if something happened to her, Stefan would be able to tell Damon that she had tried to help him.

Katherine would have never risked herself like this for them. The vampire had proven that many times already. How many times had she done something in the guise of helping one of them only to turn around and stab them in the back with her actions?

Too many times.

Elena let herself fall backwards onto the bed as she closed her eyes. She was so tired and emotionally drained. She was tired all of the time lately and she was pretty sure that she would never get her emotional state back into any kind of balance unless Klaus suddenly died. She had lost too many people in her life because of him and his damn plans.

She wasn’t willing to let Damon lose anything like she had. She couldn’t fix everything that had gone wrong, but she knew that she had a chance to get Damon his brother back. It was the one thing that she knew she could at least try . She owed Damon so much, but even more, she loved him. She loved him enough that she had to try to make this right for him.

How to deal with the other problem she was having, though? She had no doubt that she was somehow being compelled to make the trip in the directions she was driving. She hadn’t made a concrete destination choice beyond getting out of Mystic Falls, but she seemed to be following some trail that she didn’t even know she could see.

Her first thought was that she was being compelled. However, Damon had pretty much told her that is she was wearing her necklace, then that wasn’t what was happening to her. No, she wasn’t being compelled. She was certain of that from what she had gotten out of Damon before he blew up at her.

She wished that she could have talked to him more, but that was understandable. He was upset with what she had done and he was angry about the way she had left. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but the only way she could have done this was to sneak away and keep it a secret. If she had talked to him about all of this, there would have been a fight and it would have meant that they parted ways a lot angrier at each other.

Of course, now the man she loved pretty much despised her and thought she was no better than the one that had lied to him. The fact that he thought she was just as bad as Katherine wasn’t something that she had ever expected for him to say. She wouldn’t be doing all of this if she was anything like Katherine. She wouldn’t be out risking her life to save both guys if she was Katherine. The vampire with her face would be too focused on saving her own ass. She had proven enough times that she had no problems lying and manipulating the Salvatore brothers or pulling their strings to get them to do what she wanted them to do.

She was nothing like Katherine beyond the physical attributes. She looked like her, but that was where the resemblances ended.

Elena sighed, getting up and locking the hotel room door. She wasn’t going anywhere with the wrecked emotional state she was in. The last thing that she needed was to end up in a car accident – again. She locked the windows and then she took out a few stones to put on the window sills and then hung something on the back of the hotel door.

These were a few things that Bonnie had created for her to use in her room as a little bit of a supernatural shield or alarm. It was supposed to give her extra protection for where she was staying when she wasn’t in her room or the houses. Hopefully, they would be just as effective here while she tried to get some rest before starting out early on her hunt again.

She would find Klaus and she would save Stefan.

But after she got some sleep.

She got her things out and took a quick hot shower, hoping that it would help her relax so she could sleep better. Once out of the shadow, she took out her new journal and started writing. Just in case she didn’t make it through this, there would be a record of what she had done in order for the ones that came after to have at least some information.

Soon, though, she had to close the book and lay down. She needed to try to get some sleep. Tomorrow was going to be another hard day of searching and thinking.

After all, she still didn’t know _how_ she was going to stop Klaus and get Stefan back for Damon. Those were details that she still had to figure out and plan. It wasn’t like she knew right away how she was going to accomplish such a thing. That had just been the decision she had made after the funerals and after she almost lost Damon.

Only, she guessed that there was no _almost_ to that now. She had hurt him even though it hadn’t been what she had intended. She had only wanted to do something to make up for everything that had happened to him because people were after her. She only wanted to do something for Damon in return for all of the things he had done for her.

She sighed, punching the pillow next to her in an attempt to make it a little more comfortable. She needed to get an early start. She had hoped that the conversation with Damon would last longer, but she guessed that he was feeling betrayed about leaving without saying anything ahead of time. The best she could hope for now was to get Stefan back to him and hopefully they could at least make some attempt to be friends.

 _Friends_

Why did that sound like such a dirty word in her mind right now? Could it be because she knew that Damon had loved her and she loved him, but she had hurt him – just like Katherine had done over and over again.

In trying to do something unselfish and something that would be a good thing for Damon, she had lost him. She had lost him before she had even had him for very long.

She closed her eyes, trying to keep the tears from starting up again. Crying over things never changed them, it just made your head hurt and the rest of you feel even worse.

It took Elena a very long time to fall asleep that night. There were too many things that kept whirling around in her mind. She had to find Klaus and therefore find Stefan. Finding Stefan then required to get him to come back from that darkness inside him and realize that destroying life was not what he wanted to do. He had fought too hard over the years in order to change from that monster that he once was.

She closed her eyes, trying to make her breathing calm down. She needed to relax so that she could at least get enough sleep that would allow her to be able to drive the car the next day without crashing. That also meant she was going to have to stock up on coffee and soda for all of the driving she was doing. She wasn’t going to be comfortable making many stops like this the further she got from safety. Every time she stopped, it was one more chance for someone to attack her or for the people back home to get lucky enough to follow her trail. She wanted to make that as hard as possible for her friends to find her. She didn’t want them to get into any kind of danger.

She tossed and turned most of the night. She managed to catch small snatches of sleep, but they weren’t very restful. If there weren’t nightmares in her head, there were worries that would keep her waking up. The nightmares, unfortunately, were something she had started getting used to with everything that had happened. Seeing things coming out of the dark to attack her was something that had become all too common in her life and in her dreams. If it wasn’t the dreams about being attacked or killed in so many ways, it was the dreams about the deaths of her friends and family. It was dreams of too many trips to the cemetery to bury someone new and lay roses on their graves. Memories of things that she shouldn’t have had to go through.

She finally decided that she wasn’t going to get any more sleep and got up about the same time the sun started to rise. She took a quick shower and pulled on a pair of jeans and boots she could both drive and run in. She wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances when she was out hunting like this. It was something that she could that Damon wouldn’t view as being completely stupid. If she was going to end up running for her life, she was running in shoes that were both warm and had traction.

She brushed her teeth and pulled her hair back in a ponytail before packing things back into her duffel bag. Once she had made sure all of her stuff was loaded in the car, she gave the motel room a thorough search. She didn’t want to leave anything behind that would make it an easy job to track her. She even used her portable dust vacuum from her car to vacuum the bed and the counters in the bathroom. She was pretty sure that she had removed anything that vampires or werewolves could use to find her.

After she was satisfied with what was not left in the room, she packed everything into her car and started driving again. Like the days before, she just pulled onto the road and started driving. She was glad that she wasn’t being compelled – as far as Damon knew – but she still couldn’t tell why she kept taking the routes that she was taking. It all seemed to be so random. It was just like she got behind the wheel and the car took her where they were going.

Sighing, she put a new CD in the player, trying to get herself into a less tense condition. The more she kept tight and stressed, the more her muscles were going to have a hard time getting past all of her tension to fight if she got herself into trouble. She still had no idea where she was going or what she was going to when she go there.

Two hours later, she stopped to get something to drink and when she came back to her car, her cell phone was ringing.

She didn’t instantly recognize the number, so it took her a moment to decide to answer the phone. “Hello?”

“Hello, Elena. It’s been so long since I have heard that beautiful voice of yours.”

Elena had to swallow and then swallow again so that she could force the words out.

“Klaus.”

 

Alaric frowned as he looked into Damon’s face. “What makes you so sure that he has her? Did he call?”

Damon frowned and shook his head. “No, but Elena called.”

“Elena called?” “Where is she?” “Is she all right?” “When?”

When it looked like Damon was having a hard time not yelling, Alaric yelled for quiet in his best teacher voice. Stunned, all four teens instantly quieted down and looked at him. Once he was sure they were done shouting questions, he looked at Damon.

“What happened when Elena called?” It couldn’t have been good or else Damon would be long gone, retrieving her.

“She called to ask if someone could be compelled over a distance by a vampire who wasn’t face to face with her. I told her that if the vampire had ingested her blood and she wasn’t protected by vervain, then yes, someone could be compelled over great distances by the same vampire.”

“Why would she ask such a thing?” Jeremy asked. “Where is she, what’s happening to her?”

Alaric was watching Damon’s face and watching the mask of indifference he wore slide over his features. That was not a look that boded good for anything that was going on here.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask her,” Damon said in a carefully even voice.

Tyler frowned at him. “You lost your temper on the phone, didn’t you?”

Alaric really wanted to throttle Tyler right about now – after he figured out when the guy had become so perceptive.

“What did you do?” Caroline demanded. “How could you lose your temper on her when she was calling you and could have given you the first lead in where she was?”

“Besides somewhere in Ohio,” Alaric reminded them. “We know she’s in Ohio.”

“I’m pretty confident that we can guarantee that she’s no longer in some small town in Ohio,” Damon replied. “It wasn’t her cell phone that she called me from and if she’s asking questions about things she already knows, then that means something has happened.”

“Like what?” Bonnie finally asked.

Damon sighed and looked directly at her. “Klaus knows she’s alive and he’s using compulsion on her.”

“But if she’s wearing her necklace like she’s supposed to,” Jeremy said. “Compulsion shouldn’t work.”

“Except for the fact that vervain didn’t work on Klaus or on Elijah,” Bonnie said tiredly. “Remember, Jeremy, she was wearing her necklace when Elijah first kidnapped her and it didn’t do her any good. He was even able to take it off of her as a reminder that she had no protection against him.”

“But how does he even know that Elena’s alive? As far as he knows, he killed Elena. He drained her until she died.” Jeremy looked from Bonnie to Damon. “We were all insistent on being careful after John died so that Klaus wouldn’t realize the like Bonnie, Elena was alive.”

Alaric watched Damon’s eyes and then sighed, running a hand over his face. “Damn it. God damn it and damn him while we’re at it.”

“What?” Caroline demanded. “What went wrong? How does Klaus know that Elena’s alive?”

“Because Stefan told him,” Damon said tonelessly.

Jeremy stared at Damon for a long moment. “But _why_? Doesn’t he realize that telling him anything could get her killed?”

“What part of Stefan is no longer the Stefan that you knew haven’t you been paying attention to, Jeremy?” Damon’s voice was far too calm for the discussion at hand. “Anything that Klaus wants to know, Stefan will tell him because he’s a good little monster boy now. He’s no longer on your side, people. Stefan is on Stefan’s side.”

Bonnie closed her hand over Jeremy’s arm. “Why do you think Klaus is using compulsion on Elena?”

Damon looked at her for a long moment. “Several things. One being that she called to ask about vervain and long distance compulsion. Another being that she tore a page out of her journal that was discussing what had happened between Jenna’s funeral and the time she discovered that I was dying from that little nip from Fido.”

Alaric frowned in confusion. “Why would you attach any significance to a page torn out of her journal?”

“Because Elena writes about everything in her journal,” Caroline said quietly. “Anything that has happened to her or she has seen, she writes down in her journal.”

“She’s been keeping a journal ever since she learned how to write,” Bonnie agreed. “Whether she didn’t want to admit to something or something happened to really hurt her, she would never have torn a page out of her journal. She kept track of everything in her life and ripping out a page from somewhere that she has as a refuge – sometimes her only refuge – is completely out of character for her.”

“She just wouldn’t do it on her own,” Caroline agreed.

“So you guys think that she was somehow compelled to tear the page out of her journal?” Tyler questioned. “Why would one of them care what she wrote on one page – especially when there were probably so many other revealing things that she had written in her journal? Why not just take the whole journal and compel her to forget it had ever existed?”

“Because someone didn’t want her to have whatever was on the page as a memory – or something that anyone else might see,” Alaric sighed. “It could be that it was Stefan who tore out the page and not Elena.”

“But why?” Tyler insisted.

“Because written on that page was probably all about how she knew that she loved Damon and that she didn’t know what she would do if she lost him like she thought she was about to.” Bonnie said softly. “She also probably went into detail about how much it hurt to lose Stefan on top of almost losing Damon and knowing what Stefan had become to save Damon.”

“In Stefan’s mind, he was doing her a kindness by removing that one page so that she wouldn’t be faced with it every time she opened her journal and before she put her necklace back on, she was probably compelled to forget that she had even written the page in the first place,” Damon said quietly in agreement. “The last non-Ripper thing he could do for her.”

“All right,” Jeremy admitted. “That explains the journal page, but that doesn’t explain why you think Klaus is using distance compulsion on Elena.”

“You said yourself that you and Elena don’t know anyone located in Ohio,” Alaric pointed out. “So why was she in Ohio?”

“That’s a good question,” Caroline nodded. “I mean, if I was running away from a small town and trying to get lost, I’d drive west; not a weird northwest direction. L.A. would make a much better hiding place than some place like Cincinnati.”

“Oh god,” Bonnie said. “Klaus is bringing Elena to him. He’s bringing her to them so that he can finish the job.”

“We have to find her,” Jeremy whispered, his face completely white. “We have to get to Elena before Klaus does.”

“How are we supposed to do that?” Tyler demanded. “All we know is that she was in Ohio at some point and now who the hell knows. She’s certainly not going to call on us for help now that Damon got into a fight with her. He probably ruined all chances of her turning to any of us.”

Before Damon could snap at Tyler, Bonnie cleared her throat. “I might be able to do a location spell on her to give us a vague idea of where she is now.”

“I thought you weren’t sure that you could do that,” Alaric reminded her.

“That was before I knew that Elena had left her most important personal item behind. Her energy would be strongest on that or her bed and it seemed rather creepy to try and use her bed for some kind of spell.” She swallowed. “Especially since I don’t know what kind of other energy might still linger in her bedroom that would interfere with such a difficult and personal spell.”

“And you think her journal will be better for this kind of thing,” Damon asked.

Bonnie nodded. “The journal is all Elena,” she explained. “There won’t be any excess energies from you or Stefan hanging around it so it shouldn’t confuse the spell.”

“Will your spell damage it in any way?”

Bonnie gave him a sympathetic smile. “No. It will just be used as an anchor to get a fix on Elena’s energy signature. I promise, the journal will be just fine.”

“Where should we do this spell,” Alaric asked, looking around.

“Out in the back yard,” Bonnie responded immediately. “Doing it in an open space will help make sure that there are no obstacles in the way of the magic.”

“That makes sense,” Alaric agreed. “What do you need?”

“Salt, a candle, a map of the country and Damon and Jeremy.” She looked at them. “The two of you have the closest ties to her right now. It will help give the spell an added boost of power.”

Damon nodded, and Jeremy did the same.

“I’ll do anything to help get her back,” her brother said softly. “She shouldn’t have been made to think that she needed to leave in the first place.”

“She blamed herself for Jenna’s death, Jeremy,” Bonnie said quietly. “She thinks she has caused everyone you love to be taken away from you.”

“I told her that as long as I have her, everything would be all right.”

“I know you did, but I think that Jenna and then John were the last straws for her. Too much had happened in such a short amount of time.”

“Elena is one of the strongest people I know,” Caroline mused softly. “But I think the last few months have just been too much for even her. She must have gotten it into her mind somehow that she could make everything right.”

“She can’t make everything right, Vampire Barbie,” Damon said tiredly. “Nothing that has happened to her has been right or has been anything she could have stopped. The Originals have been looking for her ever since they found out that a member of the Petrova bloodline still lived. Katherine and Isobel led Klaus right back to town. Killing Katherine might have stalled things, but you remember what happened when we tried to do that – we almost killed Elena, too.”

“You couldn’t have known that the bitch had a witch link her and Elena together,” Caroline said practically.

“Wait, link them together?” Tyler was confused.

Jeremy nodded. “If we tried to hurt Katherine, Elena got hurt, too. I was barely in time to stop Damon from staking Katherine because that would have ended up killing Elena, as well.”

Tyler stared at Jeremy and then shook his head. “That’s just really evil. I’m glad that you were able to stop them in time.” He frowned. “Are they still linked?”

“I don’t know,” Bonnie admitted. “But I want to say no. I think that the spell John did negated that connection. Plus, when Klaus drained Elena, it didn’t kill Katherine.”

“Let’s go,” Damon said. “The sooner we get some magic mumbo jumbo mojo going, the sooner we can get to Elena and get her out of danger.”

Alaric went through the papers on his desk and finally handed Bonnie a folded map. “This should work.”

Bonnie nodded and took the map, then looked at Damon and Jeremy. Nodding at them, she led them into the back yard of the boarding house. She stood still a moment and then walked to one of the trees and sat down beneath it. She spread out the map and reached for the journal. Reluctantly, Damon handed it over, watching as she placed it on the map so it didn’t touch the ground.

Jeremy sat down at Bonnie’s side and Damon sat down across from her. Bonnie lit a candle that she pulled out of her bag and moved her hand over the map. Jeremy watched her hand, noticing the pendant and chain that hung from between her fingers.

“Moonstone,” Jeremy murmured. “I remember when your grandmother gave you three girls those pendants. Elena couldn’t stop showing it to me and telling me what she had told you girls about them.”

“Gran loved Elena and Caroline like they were hers, too,” Bonnie nodded. “Elena keeps hers with her no matter where she goes,” she added. “I checked her jewelry box when we found out she was gone to make sure she still carried it. Caroline has hers, too. Sometimes she wears it around her neck and sometimes as a bracelet.” She followed the stone as it moved across the map. “Gran said if we kept them with us at all times we would never be alone. It means something that Elena took hers with her.”

Damon shifted as he usually did when Bonnie’s grandmother was discussed. He knew that he was indirectly responsible for her death and it made him uneasy sometimes around Bonnie when she was doing magic. However, she was doing magic to find Elena and to help accomplish that task, he would stay as still as possible.

“You’re like her sister, so of course she was going to take it with her,” Jeremy pointed out. “You’re like her sister and she would want to have something that connected her to you no matter what idiotic things she said in those letters.”

“She blamed herself for a lot of things,” Bonnie said as she watched the jewel move over a section of the map. “Including surviving the accident that killed your parents.”

“She kept me going after that – even if I didn’t tell her that.” Jeremy sighed. “I couldn’t have handled losing her, too.”

“Maybe you have told her that, then,” Damon muttered, looking at him. “Instead of treating her like a pariah for so long when all she was doing was busting her ass to keep you safe.”

“And whose fault was it that I needed to be kept safe at first in the first place,” Jeremy demanded.

“Schematics.”

Jeremy glared at him. "Not schematics, Damon, and you know it. You killed Vickie and when she tried to kill Elena, she had to be staked. Then, because she didn't want to see me hurting -- again -- she asked you to wipe my memories."

"It wasn't because of anything I had done except exist. She wanted to protect you from the knowledge of vampires and the fact that Vickie wasn't who you thought she was. Yes, I made her into a vampire, but I didn't give her a new personality. She hated Elena even while she was human and hurting you would hurt Elena." Damon frowned at him. "Playing you while she was alive and making sure you had access to drugs tore your sister apart. When she was a vampire, she was going to kill your sister. It's why we ended up having to stake her. She was trying to murder Elena. Elena didn't want you to know what kind of person Vickie was and she especially didn't want you to know that the girl you were crushing on tried to kill her."

"He's right, Jeremy," Bonnie said quietly without looking up. "Elena didn't want you to know that she had almost been killed by Vickie and she didn't want you hurting over losing one more person like you had lost your parents."

"None of that matters right now," Jeremy said quietly. "What matters is that we find Elena before Klaus kills her."

"Guys," Bonnie suddenly interjected. "I think we've found her."

Damon and Jeremy looked down at the pendant that had stopped moving across the map. Instead, the stone seemed to be vibrating over one spot on the map.

"Where is she?" Damon demanded.

"In the middle of Lake Erie."

“How is that even possible?” Jeremy’s voice was incredulous.

“I don’t know,” Bonnie responded. “There’s nothing out there but an island and that’s not where the magic is being drawn to.”

Damon cursed very creatively. “That’s not entirely true, Bonnie.”

“What do you mean?”

Damon frowned, looking down at the map. “Klaus has a home on an island out there that isn’t on the maps.”


	3. Chapter 3

In any normal situation, Elena would have hung up the phone and then called Damon for help. However, this was nothing like a normal situation and she wanted to keep Damon as far away from here as was physically possible.

Besides, she was pretty sure he would want to give her a lecture when he found out what she was doing and they really didn’t have time for a lecture.

Instead, she listened to Klaus’ instructions carefully and wrote down the directions to the place he wanted her to meet him at. Even after she hung up and got back behind the wheel of her car, a voice was screaming inside her head that she was the world’s biggest fool for agreeing to this.

Fool or not, it was the best and possibly the last thing she could do for Damon.

At first, she had been surprised by Klaus’ terms, but realized that she had expected something like this when she had first set out on her journey. It was why she had taken the time to say goodbye to everyone that she cared for back home. When she had the random thought that maybe everyone would move into the Gilbert house together so that they could protect each other, she realized that she was skating very close to hysteria.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to pay attention the changing scenery around her, but she found that she couldn’t tell you after she passed it what she had seen. She wondered if this was all part of the compulsion that she knew she had been under for awhile now. She had remembered belatedly that vervain didn’t work on Klaus and it hadn’t on Elijah, so she had been under a compulsion ever since she left Mystic Falls. What she didn’t know is when the compulsion had been done. Besides the idea to run in the first place, had any of her actions been of her own choice and thought or what Klaus wanted her to do?

Well, there was one thing she had done that she knew was her own choice. Calling Damon hadn’t been a compulsion from anyone. She honestly had wanted to hear his voice – no matter how the call had ended.

However, ever since getting off of the phone with Klaus, every time she reached for her phone to call Damon again, she found that she couldn’t get her hand to pick up the phone. It worried her because she hadn’t felt such reticence ab0ut contacting him. She could definitely use hearing his voice right now.

It had just turned full dark when she drove up to the marshy area Klaus had directed her to. She wasn’t sure how long she had been driving, but getting out from behind the wheel was a relief. She stretched her body and looked around.

The area she was in seemed to be more of a private area of beach instead of belonging to any of the homes and cabins she had passed. Turning to look back the way she had come, she realized that she couldn’t see the main road from here. She wouldn’t have been able to find this place without Klaus’ careful directions.

Turning back with a sigh, she looked in front of her. Everywhere she looked there was sand with some kind of grass sometimes breaking up the smooth surface of the beach. The water wasn’t too far away and the moon made everything look faintly silver and unreal. It was enough to make someone think that they were in a dreamscape of some kind.

Yet, Elena knew that this was no dream. This was the place that was going to seal her fate and that of the people she loved back home. After all, that was why she was here. She was here to trade herself to the Original in exchange for Stefan’s freedom.

She walked down the beach away from her car and closer to the ocean. She didn’t know what Klaus was going to do to her, but she was sure that her existence as a human being had an expiration date. It probably wouldn’t be very long until then, so she was going to make the most of these last few minutes of freedom that she possessed. She walked along the beach, feeling the waves breaking over her feet and she took in the scent of the clean night air.

There were worse ways she could have spent the last few moments of her own life.

“This is type of scenery that one such as you was meant for.”

Elena turned to see Klaus standing close by. He looked the exact same as the last time she had seen him. Of course, this time, he wasn’t killing Jenna or about to kill her.

“One such as me?” She questioned bitterly.

“The beautiful heroine of the tragic gothic tale,” Klaus said smoothly. “You’ve lost everyone that was important to you and still you fight to remain strong. Still you keep holding on to the hope that someone will save you.”

“I don’t need to be saved, Klaus. This was a choice that I had made freely long before you set about compelling me to take the journey towards all of this.” She looked at him. “So tell me, how long have you known I had survived that little ritual you killed me in?”

Klaus watched for a long moment, the hint of a smile on his face. “I should have realized that one of the men that loved you would find some way to save you. I didn’t expect that John would find a spell that would exchange his life for yours. He wasn’t exactly known for unselfish acts – which was one of the reasons he was such a good minion. As long as it didn’t risk his neck, he’d do whatever we asked of him.”

“Until it came to letting you kill me.”

“That was indeed a surprise. I would never have guessed that John was capable of something resembling a father’s love.”

“It seems you underestimated a lot of things when you decided to come after me and make trouble in our town.”

“Did I? I still won in the end. The ritual did exactly what it was meant to do. And, since you didn’t die, I do have access to your blood whenever I want.” Klaus smiled. “Petrova blood. There seems to be nothing quite like it on this earth.”

“As long as you let Stefan free – in one piece and without added injury to his mind or his body – you get to keep me.”

“Not that I will go against the bargain we made earlier, but I must ask why I should give in to your demands? After all, I have you now. You can’t run faster than me and I could keep both you and Stefan to do with as I wish.”

Elena moved her hand and the moonlight reflected off of the blade in her hand. “Because I don’t think that you can get to me before I put this knife into my own heart. I haven’t taken blood in a long time, so I’ll die and you’ll lose the last source of your precious Petrova blood.” This time she smiled. “I read the books, Klaus. You need to feed on one of us at least once a year to keep your body functioning in its hybrid state. You can’t afford for me to bleed out – something that you didn’t find out until after the ritual.”

“She’s right, you know,” a new voice said as he stepped out of the shadows. “If Elena kills herself, you’ll lose because you’ll start dying a slow death.”

Elena blinked when she recognized who was standing there. “Tyler? What are you doing here?”

“Hello, Elena,” Tyler said, his eyes never leaving Klaus. “Did you really think that any of us were going to let you just throw your life away on this piece of shit for the rest of us?”

“But how did you find me? I didn’t even know where I was going when I left Mystic Falls.”

“GPS,” a new voice said as she stepped out onto the beach. “Your car has it and my mom tracked it in order to help us find you.” She shook her head. “Really, Elena, sacrificing yourself was not the best idea that you could have come up with.”

“There was no other choice, Caroline,” Elena said, staring at one of her best friends. “People would have just kept getting hurt or dying if I stayed there.”

“And what about Jeremy,” Tyler asked. “You’re all he has left. Abandoning him to save Stefan doesn’t seem all that loving or fair to him.”

“I’m not doing this _for_ Stefan,” Elena said quietly. “I’m doing this so that all of you are safe and Jeremy doesn’t have to lose anyone else. If Klaus has me, then there is no reason to go back to the town and hurt anyone else to get to me.”

“He doesn’t care about any of that, Elena,” Stefan’s voice preceded him onto the beach. “All your brother cares about is your safety and knowing that you’ll be all right.”

It was Stefan’s sudden arrival that caused the problem. Elena’s hand on the knife wavered when she saw him and suddenly, Klaus had her back against him. One hand was at her neck and the other was holding the knife away from her body.

“And now what do you think you’re going to do, hmm?” Klaus whispered against her ear.

“Never stop trying to send you to hell,” Elena said to him, her eyes flashing her anger and hatred at him.

“Let her go!” Stefan demanded.

“I don’t think so,” Klaus said as he looked down at Elena. “Ahh, you look so like Katerina when you glare at me like that. So like a wild kitten who doesn’t realize that she is out of options except for those that her captor gives to her.”

Elena growled at him, trying to kick at his legs. “I’m not your captive, Klaus,” she corrected. “I came here willingly.”

“But now you have no way of escaping me. I hold all of the cards now.”

“That’s the problem with you, Klaus,” a voice drawled. “You always think that you have complete control over every situation.”

“Damon,” Elena whispered. “Oh, Damon, no. You weren’t supposed to come here.”

“Well, like certain people I can name, I don’t always do what the hell I’m supposed to.” He looked her over to make sure she was unhurt and his gaze lingered on the knife. “And what, do tell, were you going to do with that?” The edge in his voice said that he had a pretty good idea about what she had been thinking and he didn’t like it.

“She was going to kill herself if I didn’t send your dear brother back to you unharmed like she and I agreed upon,” Klaus sounded amused. “She thought that she would deny me the blood in her veins by stabbing herself in the heart.”

Elena struggled in his grasp again. “Making sure that he couldn’t break the agreement. I wouldn’t have stabbed myself unless he didn’t keep his part of the bargain.”

Damon sighed and the look he gave her probably would have made anyone else flinch. However, Elena knew enough about him to know that he was so angry because he was worried about her. She could see how much his dark eyes were glittering and that gave her an idea about the depth of his rage right now.

“I wanted to make sure he gave you your brother back,” Elena said softly, trying to ease the rage in his eyes. “It was because of me that you lost him.”

“No.” Elena and Damon looked over to where Stefan was shaking his head. “Elena, it wasn’t your fault. I made the choice to go with him because I knew he could save Damon. I became what I am by my own choosing – just like when I got Katherine to make Damon into a vampire, too. Both of these were my choice.”

“But it was my fault that he needed saving.”

“Wrong again.” This time it was Tyler who spoke. “I’m the one that bit him, not you. There was nothing that you could have done to prevent what happened between him and I. It wasn’t you who caused the circumstances.”

“And it wasn’t your fault that I got bit,” Damon added, his eyes never leaving her face. He didn’t like that Klaus was holding her and that much shown quite clearly in his eyes.

“Caroline…”

Caroline shook her head. “Not your fault. Katherine killed me to send a message to Stefan and Damon,” Caroline reminded her. “It wasn’t because of you – it was because of them. She didn’t know that I had recently been given Damon’s blood and that when she killed me I would become a vampire.”

“Really, Elena, you need to stop blaming yourself for things that you couldn’t have changed. None of the things that happened to anyone is your fault,” Damon chided her. “And really, if I could get into your brain and just flick out the part of you that is so willing to martyr yourself for others I would do it in a heartbeat.”

Klaus let his fingers stroke Elena’s throat where he was holding her. “I don’t know. I like the fact that she came to surrender herself to me. Unlike with Katerina or with Isobel, I didn’t have to compel her to give herself to me.” He smiled, kissing Elena’s cheek. “Take your brother and go, Damon. I have everything I want right here.”

“We’re not leaving without Elena,” Tyler growled, planting himself in a fighting stance.

“Little werewolf, do you think that you can stand against my pack?”

“What pack?” Damon said conversationally. “Oh, you mean the pack of wolves and vampires that you left back on your island because Elena was such an easy person to deal with? I’m sorry to say, but if everything went according to plans, then Bonnie, Jeremy and Alaric have dealt with them. Elena’s witch wasn’t the witch that died, after all. And Bonnie really does have a bitch of a vengeance streak.” His eyes flicked over Elena’s face and then back to Klaus’ eyes again. “Especially, it seems, when it comes to Elena or Caroline.”

Klaus didn’t let his emotions show on his face, but Damon saw the change in his eyes. They had the Original outmaneuvered and outnumbered. However, he wasn’t sure how much that was going to help things. He still had Elena by the throat and that was something that Damon wasn’t going to risk. Elena’s life had become too important to him to let it be wasted by pushing Klaus too far and too soon.

Unfortunately for the best intentions of Damon, Elena hadn’t thought about how bad it would be for her if she did something. She wasn’t willing to let herself be used to hurt her friends any longer. It had been one thing to be willing to exchange herself for Stefan, but this standoff was another thing entirely.

With another vampire, what she tried might have worked.

Hearing about the destruction of the pack of hybrids he had managed to create caused Klaus’ grip on Elena’s hand with the knife to falter slightly. The others couldn’t have seen it, but Elena felt it. She kept herself as still as she possibly could as she looked at Damon.

“I love you,” she said softly.

Damon’s eyes changed as he read something in Elena’s eyes that he didn’t like. “Don’t.” He swallowed, forcing himself to say something in public that he might never have said otherwise. He didn’t know what she was planning, but he knew that it couldn’t be anything good. “Please.”

Elena’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry.”

Damon stepped forward, but Elena moved faster than she had ever moved in her life. She pulled the hand with the knife out of Klaus’ hand and stabbed downward into his side. Before she could be glad that she had done _something_ , Klaus’ hand curled over hers and there was a sharp pain in her chest. She looked down to see that Klaus had kept the knife moving after she stabbed him and ripped it out across his body before he stabbed her with.

Damon stood, frozen for what seemed like forever as he watched this playing out in front of him. His eyes moved from her to the puddle of blood that was forming in the sand at her feet.

“Elena.” He was surprised that he was even able to say that much as he felt something breaking within himself. He couldn’t have managed anything above a whisper if his life had depended on it at that point.

He heard Caroline screaming from what seemed like far away, but as of yet, he hadn’t even heard Elena make a sound. She had to be in such pain from what had just happened, but she was still standing, held against Klaus’ body as her blood flowed out.

He stepped forward and then moved to grab Elena away from Klaus even as he registered that two figures had also jumped at Klaus, tearing into his throat and neck. He assumed that it was Stefan and Caroline or maybe Tyler, but he really didn’t care. All of his focus was on the girl that was now bleeding to death in his arms.

“No,” he whispered as he dropped to the sand where he could hold her in his lap. “Damn it, Elena, no.” For once, the smell of her blood did nothing to entice him.

“Sorry,” Elena struggled to whisper. “So sorry.”

“Why?” He demanded. “Why? I would have thought of something.”

“C-couldn’t let him hurt you. Couldn’t let him take anything else from you. Lost t-too much.”

Caroline dropped to her knees next to them. “Oh damn it, sweetie. This isn’t good. You didn’t have to do that.”

Damon kept one hand moving across Elena’s face. “Elena… Elena I can…”

“No.” Suddenly Stefan was there. “No, she said she didn’t want that. She wanted to grow old and die as a human.”

“Go to hell,” Caroline snarled. “She wanted to grow old, not die before her eighteenth birthday.” Her hands fluttered as she tried to figure out how to stop her best friend’s bleeding without causing her more pain. “Bonnie!” She screamed, not even sure if her voice would carry, and knowing that her witchy friend probably wouldn’t get here in time. “Bonnie!”

Elena lifted a hand to touch Caroline. “She c-can’t. Too much.”

“Get out of my way,” a new voice growled. “If you don’t want to lose her, Blondie, then move!”

Damon growled as the new scent hit his senses, but the woman crouching next to them in the sand just snarled at him.

“Oh just shut up.” Katherine brought her face to Elena’s so that she could see her. “Drink, damn you. Drink or I swear to god I will drag his bleeding corpse over here and force his blood down your throat.”

It was only then that Damon saw Katherine was holding her bleeding wrist over Elena’s mouth. He lifted his face to look towards Klaus and saw Tyler making quick work of tearing the body apart. Elijah was standing near him and he had a firm grip on Stefan.

He frowned, turning back to the scene taking place on his lap.

“Why?” Elena whispered, even as Katherine’s blood dripped into her mouth and she swallowed. “Why?”

That was the exact question that Damon wanted the answer to as well.

“Ask me some other time,” Katherine said as she pressed her bleeding arm to Elena’s mouth. “Drink.” Katherine frowned at Elena. “Caroline. The necklace. Move it for now.”

To everyone’s surprise, Caroline didn’t even falter in that request. It was probably because Katherine wasn’t using a commanding voice and it was more of a request. Carefully taking the chains between the fabric of her shirt, Caroline pulled until the chain with the vervain broke and fell into the sand.

Katherine’s reason for requesting it became clear almost immediately.

“Drink,” she said softly, her pupils dilating as she stared into Elena’s eyes. “You’re not in pain and nothing is happening that you need to be strong for. Just drink and the blood will help you, I promise.”

If it had been in any other circumstance, Damon would have tried to stop Katherine from using compulsion on Elena. However, she wasn’t using it to get her to drink, merely to make her forget she was in so much pain. He watched the pain and panic in Elena’s eyes fade as she started to drink from Katherine. Elena’s bleeding stopped and when Katherine traded places with Elijah, Damon didn’t even have the energy to comment. He held onto Elena as her heartbeat slowed and as her breathing stopped. Elijah stepped back and looked at Damon.

“Go. Take her away from here.”

Damon got to his feet easily, holding Elena in his arms as he looked from Elijah to Katherine.

“Why?” Tyler asked as he came to stand beside Caroline. “Why did Katherine save her? Why did you help her save her?”

“A promise,” Katherine said simply. She looked at Damon, a faint smile crossing her face. “Go. Get you and your little army out of here. Elijah and I will take care of Stefan. She needs you more.”

Damon frowned and looked over to Stefan. He couldn’t leave him –

But really, his decision had already been made. He would always choose Elena. It didn’t matter who else was in the area, she would always come first to him.

“Stefan.”

His brother nodded. “I know. Just get her some place safe so that she doesn’t freak out more than normal when she regains consciousness and finds out what has happened.”

“Don’t be a sanctimonious bastard,” Tyler snapped. “No matter what you might have done, we weren’t going to just sit there and watch her die when there was a way to save her. If Katherine and Elijah hadn’t shown up then Damon or Caroline would have done it. The life of the supernaturally complex may not be perfect, but at least it’s still a semblance of life where they aren’t getting buried at eighteen.”

“Would you have really let her die?” Damon couldn’t help asking him.

“I brought you over against your will,” Stefan said. “I did it merely because I didn’t want to be without my brother. Elena told me before the death of Jenna that she wanted to stay a human and not be a vampire. I would have honored her wishes.”

“Because you’re so good at that,” Caroline said, shaking her head. “She said that before she started losing everyone around her. She said that before she lost Jenna, John and almost lost Damon. I think that I know Elena better than you do. She wasn’t ready to be dead before she turned eighteen.”

“Then why did she attack Klaus in the first place?” Stefan demanded. “Why did she do any of these things that she did? I compelled her to go one with her life. I destroyed parts of her journal so that she wouldn’t be able to find us.”

“She attacked Klaus to save you and Damon, you idiot,” Katherine said. “She was trying to save you and the rest of her friends. Klaus used compulsion to get her here and that act of defiance was something that she thought would be the last thing she would ever be able to do freely. She knew what was going to happen to her. Better dead than Klaus’ blood bank for the rest of her life.”

Elijah sighed. “Her will was stronger than yours, Stefan. She may have told you before Jenna’s death that she wanted to be human, but I don’t think she will hate what she will become.” His eyes met Damon’s. “Especially as it will let her be among those that she loves.”

Damon didn’t even comment. He still couldn’t believe that Stefan would have just let her die and he didn’t want to get into it with his brother right now. He held tightly to Elena as he ran in the direction of his car. He could hear Caroline and Tyler coming behind him, and let himself relax slightly.

They had saved her.

Yes, granted there would be a lot of explanations needed and a lot of apologies exchanged between everyone, but as Damon lay Elena across the backseat of his car, he allowed a small smile to cross his face. He was going to count this battle as a victory.

He nodded at Caroline and Tyler – knowing that they would go and get the rest of their group. They could handle those explanations. He had something more important to take care of. He turned his car onto the main road and headed in the direction of Mystic Falls.

It was time to go back home.

Home sounded really good right about now.


End file.
